Ice – Mike Davis

Text Excerpt

If you’d tried to tell me a year ago that the past would hold more of a future for me than the present – I’d have told you to get your head read. And if anyone had even hinted for one second that I’d come from a past so distant that my mere existence would shake the most hallowed halls of knowledge to the ground – I’d have laughed in their face. But now, I’m not so sure – About anything.

And to top it off, I don’t know which stunned me more: The fact that my mother had fled to Australia from California to avoid prosecution or the supposed crime she was to be prosecuted for. Up until the discovery of these questions, everything in my life had been going swimmingly well. But I have a sickening feeling that that’s all about to be change.

Maybe I’d better start at the beginning. Until a few short weeks ago I’d been a fairly normal eighteen-year-old from a modest economic background and a pretty average Generation Y kind of kid. I was good at sports, surfed, chased girls, was computer literate and, by all accounts, above average intelligence. And like many kids, I was raised in a single parent situation.

Unlike anyone else on this planet however, I was beginning to suspect that there’s a chance that my father had been brutally murdered, over five thousand three hundred years ago, give or take a week or two.

And to make matters worse, my mother had tagged me with the oddball name of Antiq, which is a local Inuit term for the spirit of a departed ancestor that’s then allocated to the newest newborn of the Inuit people she was studying for her anthropology PHD. Not really a name or identity at all and one which still puzzles the Inuit. And then there’s my nickname of ‘ICE’ which she’s always affectionately referred to me as, but always adding “You’re the coolest.” Worked for me. And if what I was beginning to suspect had any basis in truth – I may just be the reason that Mum made the quantum plummet from notable to world’s most notorious anthropologist.

Tagged with the name of Antiq ‘Ice’ Braveheart, I travelled through life oblivious to my real identity until 2008 when I was eighteen years old and required to produce my birth certificate in order to travel on my own passport. When I learned, much to my surprise, that I hadn’t been born in Australia as I’d been led to believe but a Poste Restante Box in Santa Barbara, California and to add to the confusion; my mother’s family name at my birth was Sanderson not Braveheart; as it is now; and had been changed by deed poll in 1992 when I was but a child.

Things being as they are I couldn’t help but wonder why she’d mysteriously changed her name and omitted to tell me that I hadn’t indeed been born in Australia and that her current surname of Bravehart was not my real father’s name but one she’d chosen to throw off her pursuers; which brings me to the need to travel at all at the tender age of eighteen.

It seems that I’d contracted some kind of weird virus that no one had ever heard of and the resulting DNA testing for any gene with a propensity for harbouring this unique weakness, unbeknownst to me, started alarm bells ringing all around the world and sending flags flying everywhere and then I’d been contacted by a Doctor from the University of California at Santa Barbara who specialised in genetics who took an unnatural interest in my case. By this time I was a first year university student pondering the difficulties the life of a struggling novelist could be when I discovered the inconsistencies in the details of my own identity which I, in turn began to question.

I began to suspect that everything was not as it seemed when, quite by chance, I learned that a noted anthropologist with the same surname as my mother’s, before deed poll change, had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from sight in early 1991 and never surfaced again. Could my research assistant at Queensland University mother, Muriel Braveheart, really be that Margo Sanderson, anthropology doctoral candidate suspected of some kind of technical impropriety with an archaeological find in Europe in 1991?

I hadn’t given it another thought until a few weeks ago, June ’09 that I recalled, with startling clarity, why I’d always loved the faces of the Inuit I would see in National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. I’d been visiting that very same gene specialist at the University of California at Santa Barbara in regard to my virus at the time and took the opportunity to fly on to Alaska to spend some time with my mother who; in the course of her current research work at the University of Queensland; was working in the Arctic Circle.

To my absolute astonishment, as soon as I’d gotten a whiff of their camp on the breeze, I felt at home and when the people she was working with all seemed to know me and welcomed me like a long lost son, I just knew that I’d been there before. Believe me, it was more than just the fact that Mum was working there that bred this kind of familiarity with these people. It was as if a fresh puff of wind had suddenly blown a hole in the impenetrable fog of the past to part the mists of time and spotlighted those round, smiling faces that’d sweetened so many of my early memories for most of my life. And it wasn’t a dream, it was real. It was more like coming back and to be completely truthful – I’ve never felt more at home in my life.

In an instant I recalled how as soon as we’d arrive anywhere, some round-faced woman would gather me up and make sure I was warm and safe. I remember their icy noses on my cheeks and their twinkling brown eyes and voices that always seemed to be on the brink of hysterical laughter. There was just something about those expectant eyes and warmth that, like then, put me at ease.

Suddenly it made sense as to why I’d felt so uncomfortable when men had called around to see my mother when I was quite young at home in Noosa Heads: It because they’d always regarded me as if I was an offensive, unappealing appendage attached to my mother – An annoyance. Suddenly, I had this image of kindly Inuit men who’d taken the time to give me a piece of bone or tooth; at first to cut my teeth on and later a rock to rub on it and as I got older asking me if I didn’t think it looked like a whale, seal or tern. If it didn’t have a close resemblance, he’d scratch at it with another stone until it did. We’d sit for hours and carve some kind of creature out of something else altogether and it was the most magical thing in the world to do – beautiful memories that just seemed to materialise before my eyes.

🧊 400-Word Précis — Ice (Medford Haley Book III)

When a terrified woman appears on surfboard shaper Medford Haley’s doorstep in Noosa before dawn, she brings with her a secret that defies science and faith alike. Fifteen years ago, anthropologist Margo Sanderson vanished amid scandal—accused of inseminating herself with genetic material taken from a 5,300-year-old Neolithic mummy. Now living under the name Muriel Bravehart, she’s been discovered, and her son—nicknamed Ice—is in danger.

What begins as a desperate flight across Queensland’s back roads soon becomes a profound journey into identity, faith, and human origins. Ice, an eighteen-year-old surfer with unsettling allergies and a guileless soul, learns that he is the living child of a prehistoric man. Pursued by religious fanatics determined to destroy what they deem “the devil’s spawn,” Medford, Muriel, and Ice must disappear into the wilderness, guided only by the tides, survival instinct, and the faint hope of finding sanctuary.

Through their perilous escape—from Noosa’s shimmering coast to remote beaches and mangrove estuaries—Davis layers a story as raw and elemental as the surf itself. Ice examines the boundaries of science, spirituality, and motherhood through the lens of an impossible birth and a boy who may hold the key to humanity’s forgotten innocence.

Told with Mike Davis’s trademark blend of humor, philosophy, and lyric realism, Ice is both chase novel and meditation—a contemporary adventure that transcends genre. In this final volume of the Medford Haley trilogy (The Shaper, Freak Show, Ice), Davis brings his characters full circle: from the salt-stained shaping bay to the ancient pulse of the earth beneath the frozen tundra and the surf-washed Queensland coast.

“Some secrets aren’t meant to be buried. Some sons aren’t meant to be forgotten.”

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🧭 Metadata

Primary Keywords:
Neolithic mystery, anthropological thriller, surf fiction, genetic ethics, Australian adventure, spiritual thriller, mother-son survival story, redemption, prehistoric DNA, Noosa coast novel, Mike Davis author.

Long-tail SEO phrases:

• “anthropological fiction set in Australia”
• “Neolithic mystery novel about genetic discovery”
• “spiritual thriller with surfing and survival”
• “books like The Shaper and Freak Show by Mike Davis”
• “Australian coastal suspense series Medford Haley”

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🛠️ Amazon KDP Metadata

Title: Ice
Subtitle: Book III of the Medford Haley Series
Author: Mike Davis
Series: Medford Haley Chronicles
Language: English
Print Trim Size: 5” × 8”
Page Count: 300–350 (based on manuscript)
Format: Paperback / eBook
Publisher: Point Surfer Press
Publication Date: 2021
ISBN-13: 978-1713067153
Cover Finish: Matte
Country of Publication: United States

Short Description (for Amazon KDP listing — 500 characters)

Fifteen years after vanishing in scandal, an anthropologist and her surf-shaper friend race across Australia to protect her son—born of ancient DNA—from fanatics who would destroy him. Ice blends chase, science, and soul in the thrilling conclusion to the Medford Haley series.

Full Description (for KDP — up to 4000 characters)

When a frightened woman knocks on surfboard shaper Medford Haley’s door in the middle of the night, he has no idea the secret she carries will shatter everything he believes about life, love, and time.
Muriel Bravehart—once Margo Sanderson, an anthropologist disgraced by an impossible experiment—has spent fifteen years in hiding with her son Ice. But when a newspaper clipping exposes their secret, the past comes roaring back.
Pursued by zealots and driven by instinct, Medford joins their flight across the backroads of Queensland, seeking refuge among the beaches and estuaries of Australia’s wild coast.
As Ice learns the truth of his origin—a child conceived from the frozen DNA of a Neolithic man—he must come to terms with what it means to be human in a world obsessed with division and faith.
Ice is the third, hauntingly beautiful instalment in Mike Davis’s Medford Haley series, a story of survival, belief, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and her son.

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📚 Goodreads Metadata

Genres:

• Literary Fiction
• Adventure Fiction
• Anthropological Thriller
• Science & Spiritual Fiction
• Australian Fiction

Categories (BISAC Codes):

• FIC019000 — Fiction / Literary
• FIC031000 — Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
• FIC028070 — Fiction / Science Fiction / Genetic Engineering
• FIC014000 — Fiction / Family Life / General
• FIC002000 — Fiction / Action & Adventure

Tags / Keywords:
surfing novel, Noosa fiction, anthropology, genetic experiment, Neolithic child, Australian chase novel, wilderness refuge, surfboard shaper, redemption, spirituality, prehistoric DNA, motherhood, identity, Mike Davis Medford Haley series.